Cusco 2
Topic: Travel| 3 Comments »We woke up at six. Which stank because we got only three hours of sleep, but six was sleeping in considering our trail schedule. After getting breakfast we had errands to run. BTW the cheapest drink here is papaya or mango or pineapple juice. Cheaper than sprite or fanta. It is hilarious. They also serve avocado with everything. And asparagus soup is the cheapest soup on any menu. Needless to say I live off of papaya juice, avocado and asparagus soup. My body thinks I suddenly got rich and went to culinary heaven. I must say that Peruvian food is truly incredible. Everything we have eaten has been beyond delicious. And you all know that my food standards are high. Everything is fresh.
We first went to the post office and sent a ton of postcards. Postage is super expensive. Two bucks a postcard. David was having a heart attack as I happily sent 12 postcards. Then we had to go to an Internet cafe so that David could do some computer magic. He said he needed to transfer pictures but I know he was going through a withdrawal and had to touch a keyboard to get to his electronic nirvana. After 1.5 hours I was able to lure him away. We then went shopping for souvenirs and had lunch. David’s ability to speak Spanish has been priceless. But when it comes to bargaining he leaves me alone with my five Spanish words and two dance moves while he is laughing his head off and records my performance for posterity.
After lunch we went to take a nap and resolve a huge problem. We brought three credit cards with us: Amex, MasterCard, and Visa – all of which put holds on our cards. So we could not access any money. That whole affair was a nightmare. Thanks to Skype we were able to call for 2 cents a minute and battle it all out. Amex was wonderful and gave us a temporary pin number that allowed us to withdraw up to 500 dollars but only one time- of course we later learned that you cannot withdraw more than 200 dollars from Peruvian ATM. Visa/wells Fargo were useless and I threw a major fit. I have always hated Wells Fargo and now am determined to burn the card the moment I get home. MasterCard/Capital One were incompetent and put three different holds on the card. David was going through the roof and I hope they don’t use any of his phone calls for training purposes.
We also had to get our laundry done. All our clothes were wet and smelled horrid. We were going to do the laundry ourselves at a laundromat but apparently in Peru there is only the kind of laundry services where you drop off your clothes and pray real hard that most of them will come back. So we prayed hard. Because the only clothes we had we were wearing- David wore his swimming trunks and I my tiny shorts and garments inside out. We were quite the fashionistas. Especially considering it was cold, everyone else was in swaters.
We then visited convent of Santo Domingo which is built on top of the Incas main temple of the sun, the most important temple in the whole Inca empire that was covered in thousands of tons of gold. The Spaniards took the gold, tore down the temple but used the foundations but built the convent. Fifteen years ago an earthquake revealed the Inca walls because the Spanish walls and plaster tumbled while the Inca walls held strong. David hates the Spanish and announces it to me At least twice an hour. It is really horrific what the Spanish perpetrated on the local culture. We hired a guide to walk us through the convent. He was an awesome character and worth every penny. The Incas were masters of astronomy and he explained a ton of things to us about their calendar and such. Too much to write. Then we picked up our laundry. All our clothes came back. BTW laundry is charged by weight. A dollar per kilo about. Anyway we were ecstatic.
